James Mattis explains viral 'hold the line' video and his support for Trump

Secretary of Defense James Mattis on Thursday dismissed
murmurings of an ideological divide between himself and President
Donald Trump.

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During a
press briefing at the Pentagon, Mattis recalled the now-viral
"hold the line"
speech he gave in front of US service members in Jordan in
August, in which some of his comments about division in the US
were construed as an ethical separation from Trump.

"If you'll remember, the first, I don't know, three, four, five,
six paragraphs was about America coming together," Mattis said.
"And so, fresh in my mind a couple hours later, and I used that
theme to say that, you know, we've got to come back together, get
that fundamental friendliness. You guys - military guys, you hold
the line as our country comes back together.

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"I'm using the president's thoughts, and they thought that I was
distancing from the president," Mattis continued. "So I mean, it
shows how ludicrous this really is."

"I mean, I'm not trying to make fun of the people who write along
those lines," Mattis said of the narrative that he was distancing
himself from Trump. "I think this is more someone's rather rich
imagination," he said.

Theories of a divide between Trump and other White House
officials - most notably Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and the
National Economic Council director Gary Cohn - have spread as
Trump continues to baffle critics and supporters following his
administration's response to the deadly Charlottesville,
Virginia, rally and continued provocations from North Korea.

During an
interview on "Fox News Sunday," Tillerson fueled rumors of a
White House rift when he was asked whether anyone doubted Trump's
values. "The president speaks for himself," he responded.

Cohn took a more direct
approach, publicly criticizing Trump's response to the
Charlottesville protests and saying the White House "must do
better in consistently and unequivocally condemning" white
nationalist and white supremacist groups.

Mattis expressed confidence that divisiveness in the US was not a
threat to the military's unity in the field.

"The way our military is organized, the leaders - and by leaders,
I mean the sergeants and the gunnery sergeants, the chief petty
officers, the lieutenants, the captains - there is such a
cohesion to the US military," Mattis said. "There's a reason this
is a national jewel, this US military. It's a national jewel. And
that almost insulates it in a very proud way from something like
we saw in Charlottesville."

"That's not to say it's not a concern, because this lack of a
fundamental friendliness among all of us, something I think the
president brought up very well in those opening paragraphs of the
Afghanistan speech ... I agree a hundred percent with the way the
president characterized that," Mattis said.